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NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS 

By FRANKLIN B. DEXTER, Litt.D. 



Reprinted from 

Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 

Volume IX 



NEW HAVEN 
1918 






ay 

JUN 83 1919 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN 

LOYALISTS, INCLUDING THOSE 

GRADUATED AT YALE. 

By Feaxklix B. Dextee, Litt.D. 

[Read January 18, 1915.] 



A good many years ago, while spending a summer in London, 
I was interested in turning over, in the Government Record 
Office, the manuscript reports of the Commissioners appointed 
in 1783 to review the applications made by the American Loyal- 
ist refugees for compensation for losses which they had suffered. 
At that time I made notes of the testimony in cases of special 
interest; and some of these notes have formed the basis of the 
present paper. I should mentioHi^j however, that more recently 
a full transcript of all these records has been secured for the 
!N"ew York Public Library, in New York City; and as this 
transcrij)t can be freely consulted by any one, with very slight 
trouble, my notes have no longer even the modest value which 
I may have once attached to them. 

Any sketch, however slight, or superficial, of the sentiment in 
Connecticut at the time of the Revolution must be based pri- 
marily upon our historical development. 

Under the self-government provided by the comparatively 
liberal charter of 16G2, this Colony had been, generally speak- 
ing, quiet and prosperous for a century; with the consequence 
that in the exciting decade before the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, a large proportion of the shrewdest and most influential 
public and professional men doubted, to say the least, if they 
were ncft likely to be better off under existing conditions in this 
favored spot than they would be if independent of Britain: — 
this being not merely a conviction in relation to their individual 



30 ^'OTES ox SOME OF THE NEW HAVEX LOYAEISTS. 

welfare, but also in consideration of the permanent interests of 
the community. 

Foremost in the opposite scale was the healthy instinct of 
loyal cooperation in the united action of other provincial govern- 
ments, which in its turn involved also a broader and more com- 
prehensive self-interest; and in most cases this process of 
deliberation and argument resulted in the ungrudging support 
of a policy of armed resistance. 

By a law of human nature, hesitation in taking up the 
attitude of rebels was at first especially the rule of the older 
generation of public men, under the dominion of the habits of 
a life-time. Of this class an early example was the Governor 
of the Colony, Thomas Fitch, of Xorwalk, born in 1700, and 
graduated at Yale in 1721, who after a lifelong service of the 
State, culminating in twelve-years' tenure of the chief magis- 
tracy, was relegated to private life in 1766, for regarding it his 
bounden duty to take the oath required by the British govern- 
ment to put in operation the odious Stamp Act. Of course I 
would not imply that Governor Fitch is to be classed as a pro- 
nounced Loyalist ; but his attitude, and that of the four members 
of his Council who stood by him in this crisis (John Chester, of 
Wethersfield, Benjamin Hall, of Cheshire, Jabez Hamlin, of 
Middletown, and Ebenezer Silliman, of Fairfield), and of Jared 
Ingersoll, of New Haven, the unhappy Stamp- Agent, was prac- 
tically an anticipation of that of many others who were active 
in pul)lic matters eight and ten years later; and when the need 
of decision arrived for these also, we cannot wonder if a natural 
instinct constrained some such to renuiin faithful to their 
traditionary obligations. 

Perhaps I may illustrate the custonuiry ways in which the 
thinking men of this next generation were affected by the prob- 
lem set l»efore them, by taking the exami)les of five of the more 
conspicuous public men of the group of Yale graduates in 
Connecticut, — a group, however, which included a large propor- 
tion of the leading men in civil life. The five whose names 
suggest themselves, and who were all about sixty years of age in 
1774. are George Wyllys, of the Class of 1729; Elihu Hall, 



NOTES ON" SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 31 

Class of 1731 ; Abraham Davenport, Class of 1732 ; and 
Benjamin Gale and Samuel Talcott, Class of 1733. 

Colonel Wyllys, of Hartford, had grown gray in official service 
as the Secretary of the Colony, and continued to hold that useful 
station acceptably until his death at the ripe age of eighty-five; 
and though he was currently understood to be averse at first to 
the change of allegiance, he refrained prudently from overt 
action, and not only outgrew completely the faint odium of 
loyalty, but even the repute and recollection of it. 

Colonel Elihu Hall, of Wallingford, on the other hand, is the 
sole representative in this gi-oup of pure and consistent toryism. 
His birth and family connections opened to him the best that 
Connecticut had to offer ; and after his admission to the bar 
his success as a lawyer was phenomenally rapid. An extensive 
practice led to repeated trips to England, which increased his 
attachment to the mother country, and ensured his choice of it 
as a refuge after war began. He fled from New Haven to Xew 
York in January, 1779 ; and a letter is preserved, retailing his 
report to British authorities of conditions in Connecticut at 
that date, which is as untrustworthy as such reports were apt to 
be. He estimates, for example, that two-thirds of the inhabi- 
tants of the Colony are in favor of reunion with Great Britain ; 
and announces that Governor Trumbull's popularity is declin- 
ing — as evinced at the polls : an assertion entirely inconsistent 
with all other evidence. He also intimates that important con- 
versions to the British side are imminent ; but unfortunately 
the only two examples which he specifies do not display shrewd 
judgment. One of these, his own brother-in-law, the Rev. 
Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church in IN^ew Haven, 
is abundantly known as of unswerving find otherwise unsus- 
pected patriotism; and the same is, so far as I can learn, true 
of the other individual named, Colonel Thomas Seymour, of 
Hartford. Such baseless gossip was bound to react on the 
informer and his value as an adherent; and the sequel is not 
out of keeping with this prologue. For our latest glimpse of 
Colonel Hall is in London, after the war, pleading that, having 
lost his large American property, his only support, in an infirm 



32 NOTES OX SOME OF THE X'EW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 

and lonelj old age, is his pension of £80 a year, which will not 
allow him to keep a servant. Others of the London colony of 
refugees add their testimony to the dismal picture, — to the 
effect that he has in earlier life been confined in a madhouse, 
and now squanders the little he has in liquor and debauchery. 

In the College class below him was Abraham Davenport, of 
Stamford, a great-grandson of the first minister of l^ew Haven, 
a prominent member of the Governor's Council, or Upper House 
of the General Assembly, and Judge of the County Court. He 
was naturally conservative in his judgment of public questions, 
and it was no secret that he viewed with great hesitation and 
disfavor a rupture with Great Britain; but when it became 
necessary for the Colony to range itself definitely in the organ- 
ized struggle, he yielded to the paramount claims of the common 
cause, and thenceforth no one was more firm or more constant in 
its service. 

In the Class of 1733 were Dr. Benjamin Gale, of Clinton, 
and Colonel Samuel Talcott, of Hartford. Dr. Gale was a 
learned and skilful physician, of very pronounced and not alto- 
gether orthodox views in religion and philosophy. He took also 
a deep interest in politics, and had served for years in the 
Assemblv. He was one of the most striking characters of his 
generation in Connecticut, very pessimistic and critical in his 
outlook, and acknowledging no man and no group of men as 
master. To such an observer the revolutionary movement was 
full of danger. He was firmly attached to the cause of liberty, 
as he conceived it, but differed conscientiously from his neigh- 
bors and associates as to the proper mode of opposition to 
Great Britain; but in the issue, even this perverse and 
captious critic was clear-sighted enough to concede that one's 
preferences as to mode must give way, in cases where another 
mode has been commonly agreed upon. 

His classmate, Samuel Talcott, son of the Governor of the 
Colony, and therefore, like George Wyllys and Abraham Daven- 
port, placed at the head of his class by social standing, was by 
inheritance and descent counted among the richest and most 
liighly favored gentry of the period. In middle life he had 



NOTES OX SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 33 

performed his due share of civil and military service, and now, 
in a leisurely old age, his circumstances and habits illy adapted 
him to welcome the hardships of the Revolution. In the result, 
however, he too is found standing firmly by the new State govern- 
ment and withholding nothing. 

Like these, in their different ways, the better part of the 
maturer intelligence of the Colony went through the ordeal of a 
conflict between self-interest, or private judgment, and public 
policy, and rallied effectively in support of independence. 

Under the Connecticut charter, the people elected their own 
rulers, and accordingly there was here no such large official 
class, dependent on the British power, as in the other American 
colonies ; and what constituted the largest section of the Tory 
party in most of the neighboring governments, was here prac- 
tically non-existent. 

As one result of this situation, the most numerous group in 
Connecticut of those who were by personal affiliations predes- 
tined to sympathy with Great Britain, was the body of mission- 
ary clergy of the Church of England, all of whom, on receiving 
orders in the mother country, had taken a special oath of alle- 
giance to the croAvn, and were moreover dependent in good part 
on the stipends furnished by the English "Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel." 

If I have counted correctly, there were at the outbreak of the 
war nineteen Episcopal clergjonen in Connecticut, of whom 
fifteen were Yale graduates. The eldest of this group, the Rev. 
John Beach, born in Stratford in 1700, and graduated in 1721, 
had come as an undergraduate under the influence of Samuel 
Johnson, then Tutor ; and after his settlement in the Congrega- 
tional ministry in ISTewtown, while Johnson was in charge of the 
Church of England mission in the adjoining township of Strat- 
ford, he was led by the same influence to conform to Episcopacy, 
and eventually to accept the cure of missions in J^ewtown and 
Redding. It may be an indication of the weight of his character 
that the proportion of Episcopalians in itTewtown before the 
Revolution is said to have been higher than in any other town- 
ship in Connecticut. He is specially remembered for his 
3 



34 XOTES ox SOME OF THE XEW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 

intrepidity in continuing to use in public worship, after all his 
fellow-presbyters had closed their church-doors, the appointed 
prayer for the King, which included a petition to "strengthen 
him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies." 

Next to Mr. Beach, at least among those of Connecticut birth, 
in length of service in the Colony, was the Rev. Jeremiah 
Leaming, bom on the confines of Durham and Middletown in 
1717, and graduated at Yale in 1745. He also had been 
touched by Samuel Johnson's influence, and, after receiving 
orders and serving temporarily elsewhere, became in 1758 the 
minister of the parish in ^STorwalk, where after twenty years of 
devoted labor he suffered unhappily at the hands of both parties 
to the war, — first as a tory from wanton exposure while lodged 
on the floor of the county jail in winter, which rendered him a 
wretched cripple for the rest of his days, and secondly from the 
destruction of all his personal effects, a year later, when General 
Tryon, though himself a member of the Venerable Society whose 
commission Leaming bore, with equal wantonness burned his 
house and his church in the invasion of iN'orwalk. He was then 
transported within the British lines, but after the peace came 
back to Connecticut, and found in his destitute and forlorn old 
age an asylum here with that devoted Churchwoman, Madam 
Hillhouse, in whose mansion, known to us as Grove Hall, he 
died in 1804. 

The most blatant and most notorious member of this group of 
Church clergy was Samuel Peters, of Hebron, born of Episcopal 
parents in 1735, and graduated at Yale in 1757, who became a 
missionary in his native town and the vicinity. On the news 
of British troops firing on Boston, in 1774, his arrogant and 
offensive attitude, and especially his activity in publishing reso- 
lutions condemning the popular opposition to Parliament, pro- 
voked such treatment and such threats that he fled forthwith to 
England. 

His sworn statements of his resources and his losses, which 
are still on file there, in connection with his applications for 
compensation, are ludicrously and impudently overdrawn. He 
claims, for instance, that his father, who was a plain, ordinarily 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS, 35 

well-to-do farmer, in one of the poorest towns in Hartford 
County, had been the richest citizen of the entire Colony, and 
that his own confiscated estate was valued at the absurd figure 
of upwards of £40,000. By this extravagant tale he succeeded 
in gaining a pension of £200 a year, which was withdrawn some 
twenty-five years later, after fuller experience of his pretentious 
unreliability. 

It may seem like slaying the slain to enlarge on the falsehoods 
of the notorious Parson Peters ; but whenever I read over anew 
any of his attempts at narration, I am reassured that his colossal 
powers of untruth have never been properly appreciated. Take, 
for instance, his article in the Political Magazine of London, on 
the History of his near neighbor. Governor Trumbull, of 
Lebanon, who had striven hard to protect him from the mob in 
his troubles, but whose life Peters pretends to sketch in a series 
of the most outrageously unblushing and libelous falsehoods. 
In justification of such a characterization it will be enough to 
recall the initial statement in Peters' biography : — that Jonathan 
Trumbull, a scion of a family of unblemished reputation, was 
really an illegitimate child, and probably the son of the Rev. 
Samuel Welles, the minister of the town, — and this regardless 
of the plain fact that Mr. Welles was not settled in Lebanon until 
more than a year after Trumbull's birth. 

It only emphasizes Peters' peculiar character, or lack of char- 
acter, to note that he was the only minister of the Church of 
England in the Colony who thought it advisable or necessary to 
forsake his post for a foreign asylum, before the war began; 
though four others, James Scovil of Waterbury, Roger Viets 
of Simsbury, Samuel Andrews of Wallingford, and Richard 
Clarke, of jSTew Milford, were induced, after peace was declared, 
under stress of poverty by the removal of their flocks, rather 
than from experience of enmity ox odium, to accept the cure of 
parishes in the British Provinces, of kindred origin and 
sympathies. 

There remain a dozen other Episcopal incumbents, whom I 
have not mentioned specifically, who retained their places 
through the Revolutionarv strua'gle, with more or less discomfort 



36 XOTES ox SOME OF THE XEW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 

and some ill-usage, and finally acquiesced peacefully in the 
results accomplished. Of this number were such familiar fig- 
ures in this vicinity as the Eev. Richard Mansfield, Yale 1741, 
of Derby, the Rev. Bela Hubbard, Yale 1758, of ]S[ew Haven, 
and the Rev. Abraham Jarvis, Yale 1761, of Middletown — all 
of whom lived to be doctorated in a succeeding generation by 
their Alma Mater. It should perhaps be noted that Dr. ]\rans- 
field, though not in any wise to be classed with Peters, had once 
found it prudent to take temporary refuge on Long Island, on 
account of the excitement caused by the report of a letter of his 
to a British officer, 'which merely included some conjectural 
estimate of the strength of Loyalist sentiment in Western 
Connecticut. 

Many lay-members of the Episcopal Church were also avowed 
or suspected loyalists ; but comparatively few went to the length 
of exile. In such a conspicuous case as that of the Hon. William 
Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, Yale 1744, one of the most emi- 
nent lawyers in the Colony, he must be credited with an honest 
doubt as to the right course of action ; on finding himself unable 
conscientiously to advocate independence, he retired definitely 
from all public employment, but let it be known that he had no 
inclination to aid the enemy, and had without hesitation con- 
tributed to the patriotic cause : and when peace was established, 
he assumed a prominent and effective part in the councils of the 
State and of the nation. 

One locally well-known lay-churchman who had to be dealt 
with for his loyalty was Ralph Isaacs, a native of ISTonvalk, who 
had settled in Xew Haven as a merchant after his graduation 
at Yale in 1761, and became the grandfather of the Hon. Ralph 
Isaacs Ingersoll, and uncle of the wife of the elder President 
D wight. He was a rather volatile person, and was early mis- 
trusted as a sympathizer with the enemy, so that for over a year 
he was held under observation and restraint in one of the 
interior towns, where it was presumed he would lack opportunity 
of making trouble ; but he soon transgressed by taking advantage 
of his partial liberty to supply his neighbors surreptitiously with 
rum. After a further period of surveillance, he took the oath 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 37 

of fidelity, and lived thenceforth in comparative retirement, and 
mostly on his farm in Branford. 

Anotlier lay-churchman of ISTew Haven, who accompanied Mr. 
Isaacs in his temporary banishment, was Captain Abiathar 
Camp, a native of Durham ; and he also, after a like period of 
detention, took the oath and was allowed to return to his resi- 
dence here. But his allegiance was fickle, and finally he and 
his family went off with the British after the invasion in 1779. 
He had been a successful merchant, and in presenting in 1783 
a claim for compensation, he estimated his income from his 
business at £200 per annum, and his total losses at over £8000, 
though this claim was eventually much reduced. It may be of 
interest to know that while a diligent business man at that date, 
of no special educational advantages, he owned a library of 
English and Latin books, valued at ten guineas ; and also that 
he filed in support of his demands a certificate of loyalty, fur- 
nished in 1786 by his quondam fellow-townsman. General 
Benedict Arnold, — which document praises him specifically 
for activity in providing guides and pilots for the expedition 
which Arnold himself had conducted against l^ew London in 
1781. 

Captain Camp died in ISTova Scotia soon after the adjudication 
of his claim. I should add that there were included in his com- 
pany in exile a son, Abiathar Camp, Junior, who had entered 
Yale in 1773, but did not reach graduation, and who died in the 
Provinces at a great age in 1841 ; and also a son-in-law, Daniel 
Lyman, Junior, Yale 1770, a convert to the church, who became 
eventually a Major in the British army. 

Besides the Episcopalians, there was one other minute group 
of less conspicuous sectarian Loyalists. 

For local reasons Connecticut had never proved congenial soil 
for Quaker colonists; but about 1764 the disciples of Robert 
Sandeman, called Sandemanians, who imitated the Quakers in 
being conscientiously bound to a policy of passive resistance to 
war, and thus considered themselves obliged to remain loyal to 
King George, had gained a scanty foothold here, especially in 
Danburv and ITew Haven. 



38 NOTES OX SOME OF THE jS'EW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 

They were mostly of undistinguished social standing and small 
political influence. The best known of the group were Eichard 
Woodhull, Yale 1752 ; Daniel Humphreys and Joseph Pynchon, 
Yale 1757; Titus Smith, Yale 1764; and Theophilus Cham- 
berlain, Yale 1765. 

Richard Woodhull, from Long Island, had been a favorite 
pupil of President Clap, and had therefore been employed to 
fill with rather indifferent success for seven or eight 3'ears a 
College tutorship. He remained, after his first conscientious 
protest, peaceably and inconsj)icuously in ISTew Haven until his 
death. Daniel Humphreys, the ablest member of the company, 
was a son of the minister of Derby, and brother of General 
David Humphreys. He practiced law here, and also taught a 
private school of high grade ; but removed by the close of the 
war to Portsmouth, New Plampshire, where he had a long and 
rather brilliant career at the bar. His classmate, Joseph 
Pynchon, from Springfield, had inherited a good estate, and 
lived in dignified leisure in Guilford, where he had married. 
After becoming a Sandemanian, he removed to 'New Haven, 
perhaps for religious privileges, but was made so uncomfortable 
here that he retired within the British lines, thus sacrificing a 
large portion of his estate. He returned a year or two after the 
peace to Guilford, and is to be remembered as the ancestor of 
well-known New Haven citizens and of President P^Tichon, of 
Trinity College. Titus Smith and Theophilus Chamberlain, 
who were also of Massachusetts birth, had both done good service 
as missionaries among the Indians, and after their abandonment 
of Congregationalism were recognized as the preaching elders in 
charge of the obscure handful of Sandemanians in this city. 
Like Pynchon, they felt constrained to take refuge with the 
British, and they both ended their days in Halifax. 

Aside from these whom I have enumerated, the next most 
notable company of Loyalist exiles from the New Haven town- 
ship was the family circle of Joshua Chandler, Esquire, Yale 
1747. He was a native of Woodstock, and a fellow-townsman 
and first cousin of that stout Churchman, the Rev. Thomas 
Bradbury Chandler, Yale 1745, of New Jersey, who ^vas active 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 39 

just before the Revolution in promoting the scheme for an 
American Episcopate, and went later into exile as a Loyalist. 

Joshua Chandler had adhered to the Congregational church, 
and had become a successful lawyer, with every worldly motive 
to prompt him to side with the popular current. His ample 
town-house, built early in the same decade (1760-70) with other 
notable old IsTew Haven residences, on the site of the Tontine 
Hotel and the new Post-office, and thence removed in 1824 or 5, 
is now occupied by Mr. Henry B. Sargent. Like other well-to-do 
citizens of the day, Mr. Chandler had also bought extensive 
landed estate in the suburbs, and after 1765 lived principally 
on one of his farms in ISTorth Haven. In 1775, in the full tide 
of his professional and political reputation, as Justice of the 
Peace, Selectman, Deputy to the General Assembly, and Chair- 
man of the town's Committee of Correspondence, he announced, 
from conscientious motives, his determined loyalty to King 
George, and accepted the consequent suspicion and obloquy. 
Four years later he left town with the British invaders, accom- 
panied by his wife, a daughter of Joseph Miles, of l^ew Haven, 
three daughters, and four sons. He had moved in the first 
circles in the community, and in letters sent back after his flight 
professed a strong affection for his native country; but the 
records of the London commissioners in 1783 who received his 
appeal for compensation quote his statement to them that he 
had remained so long as he did in the Colony, as thinking that 
he might thus be able to communicate essential information to 
General Tryon in his invasion, and in other ways to be of service 
to the home government. The property vs^hich he abandoned, 
to the estimated value of about £4000, was confiscated by the 
toAvn, and he recovered compensation, covering three-fourths of 
that amount. 

His eldest son (John Chandler, Yale 1772) alone remained 
here; but his career was blighted by the opprobrium of the 
family record. The second son, William Chandler, Yale 1773, 
had early espoused the British cause, and in 1777 raised a com- 
pany in ^ew York of over a hundred men for the King's service ; 
and he and a younger brother earned infamy by aiding to pilot 



40 NOTES OX SOME OF THE KEW HAVEN LOYAIJSTS. 

the British in their invasion of Xew Haven. It is a satisfaction 
to know that he failed to secure an allowance from the govern- 
ment after the close of the war, except a paltry annual pension 
of £40 ; which was to cease, if he should be put on half-pav as 
a retired army-officer. 

With the family went also Amos Botsford, Yale 1763, a son- 
in-law and a ISTew Haven attorney, who stated frankly in his 
later application for compensation that he was obliged to flee on 
account of the odium arising from the action of his brothers-in- 
law as e:uides to the invaders. He claimed that he had aban- 
doned property worth over £2500, including a library, chiefly 
of law-books, valued at £37 sterling; and that his annual pro- 
fessional income was about £600, of which he had been able to 
lay up on an average £225, after spending £375 for the support 
of his family, which included a wife and three children. He 
also testified that, when filing this application in Annapolis, his 
available income scarcely exceeded thirty guineas a year; and 
on this showing he was allowed an annual pension of £224, 

There remain a few other names of notable ]^ew Haveners, 
who were temporarily or permanently disaffected. One such is 
that of Judge Thomas Darling, of Woodbridge, Yale 1740, a 
son-in-law of the Rev. Joseph ]Sroyes, pastor of the First Church : 
a stubborn, cross-gTained person, of strong convictions, unable 
on principle to accept without dispute the current arguments for 
renoimcing British sovereignty, but judicious enough in the long 
run to restrain himself from fruitless opposition to the moral 
sense of the community in which his lot was cast. With him 
may be named his College classmate and pastor, the Rev. 
Benjamin Woodbridge, in whose honor, when the farmers of 
Amity Parish asked for town privileges, they preferred the name 
of Woodbridge — a sufficient proof that imperfect s^anpathy on 
the part of their old pastor with the new political order had not 
made any serious breach in the regard of his people. 

The two classmates. Darling and Woodbridge, agreed also in 
their theological position, both being firm supporters of the Old- 
Light party, which some of the patriotic New Lights tried to 
discredit generally, as applying its conservatism to the political 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 41 

field. But ill fact disaffection was not limited, among the Con- 
gregational clergy, to the conservatives. Dr. John Smalley, of 
^ew Britain, Yale 1756, a leader of the new theology of the 
day, may serve as a typical instance of one who, starting from 
a reasoned policy of non-resistance, reproved at first the patriotic 
ardor of his flock, and was only slowly and laboriously converted 
to their point of view. 

Within College walls sentiment was overwhelmingly on the 
side of the American cause. President Ezra Stiles, the typical 
broad-minded student of his generation, and strictly speaking 
neither a politician' nor a theologian, had been from the first an 
outspoken patriot; and Professor Daggett's fearless, not to say 
foolhardy, exposure of his person is one of the best known inci- 
dents of the attack on JSTew Haven. But, on the other hand, the 
only other permanent member of the Faculty, the Rev. l^ehe- 
miah Strong, the Professor of Mathematics and ISTatural 
Philosophy, who was by the way an Old Light in theology, was 
decidedly lukewarm in his support of revolution, and perhaps 
for this reason in part was provided so meagre a stipend that he 
found himself in the course of the struggle driven to resign his 
post. 

The student body could naturally be counted on as enthusi- 
astic for liberty, with a few marked exceptions: such, for 
instance, as John Jones, a native of Stratford, of the Class of 
17T6, who went directly from College into the British army; 
and Jared Mansfield, of I^ew Haven, of the following class, a 
nephew of the Rev. Dr. Richard Mansfield, who after a lawless 
and broken College career, was among those inhabitants who 
remained passively in the town when the British troops took 
possession of it, and thus laid himself open to the charge of 
toryism. The public spirit and efiiciency of his later career 
have redeemed the memory of his early vagaries. 

One peculiarly interesting connection of Yale with the con- 
tending armies relates to the family of Dr. George Muirson, of 
Long Island, who spent his last years in l^ew Haven, and had in 
early life taken a highly notable part in the promotion of inocu- 
lation for the small-pox in America. Himself a loyal Church- 



42 NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 

man, two of liis sons, graduates respectively in 1771 and 1776, 
fought in the war — the elder on the British and the younger on 
the American side, — an unparalleled instance in Yale or New 
Haven history. Besides at least one other line of l^ew Haven 
descendants, a sister of these youths was the paternal gTand- 
mother of President Woolsey. 

There were perhaps somewhat over a thousand Yale graduates 
in active life at the time of the Revolution, and it is a satisfac- 
tory evidence of their substantial agreement in sentiment that 
less than twenty-five, or 2^ per cent, sided at once and per- 
manently with the mother country and sought refuge in British 
territory or died in British military service ; of this number the 
majority were employees of either the Crown or the Church of 
England. 

Besides such of this brief list as have already been noticed, 
only some half dozen more of the Yale Loyalists were persons 
of any special distinction ; and their record can be easily 
summarized. 

There was, for instance, the Rev. Dr. Henry Caner, of Eng- 
lish birth, the son of that master builder who was brought to-N'ew 
Haven in 1717 to construct the original building named Yale 
College, and who through the marriage of a granddaughter into 
the Hillhouse family furnished a name for our (misspelt) 
Canner Street. Born in the Church of England, he entered her 
ministry in Fairfield, after his graduation in 1724, and proved 
so attractive a preacher that in 1747 he succeeded to the rector- 
ship of the most conspicuous and aristocratic Episcopal congre- 
gation in ISTew England, that of King's Chapel in Boston. 
When the Revolution came, in his old age, he accompanied the 
British on their evacuation of the town, and finally settled down 
in England in poverty and obscurity. His attested loss of an 
annual income of £200 was at length made up by an equivalent 
pension ; and he attained a great age, which made him for eight 
years the oldest surviving graduate of Yale. 

A second venerable Loyalist of prominence, who also attained 
the distinction of being the oldest living gi-aduate, was David 
Ogden, of Newark, New Jersey, Class of 1728, the leading 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 43 

lawyer of that Province, and a Judge of the Supreme Court. 
As early as January, 1777, his active sympathy with the British 
led him to seek the protection of the troops in JSTew York and to 
receive honor there as a political counselor. Then followed 
exile in England, where he lived in pitiful illness and loneliness, 
on borrowed money, under the care of a servant, until on the 
representation of his losses he was given a pension of £200, which 
he relinquished, however, in extreme old age, to return to the 
asylum which he craved under the flag of the United States. 

Of a younger generation was another eminent graduate, who 
was firm in conscientious opposition to the Revolution, William 
Smith the younger, the historian of the Province of l^ew York, 
of the Class of 1745. As a lawyer he stood at the head of his 
profession for ability and integrity; and after he felt con- 
strained to an attitude of neutrality, his advice in matters of 
law and policy was still sought by his former associates and 
freely given. Finally, when unable to take the oath of allegiance 
to the new government, he was driven into the British lines, 
where he was complimented with the titular rank of Chief Jus- 
tice of JSTew York, and after the peace with the real and valid 
appointment of Chief Justice of Canada. 

Three years younger in College age was the Rev. Samuel 
Seabury, a native of Groton, who took orders in the Episcopal 
church, in which he had been reared. The approach of the 
Revolution found him stationed in Westchester, IN". Y., on the 
Connecticut border, where he had already been extensively 
occupied as an anonymous pamphleteer in behalf of the claims 
of the Church of England, and in opposition to the union of 
the Colonies. In 1774 he printed, still anonymously, a series of 
remarkably able and even brilliant papers in criticism of the 
Continental Congress, the authorship of which he avowed in his 
appeals to the Commissioners for compensation in 1783, 
although contradictory statements over his signature are also 
alleged to exist. In November, 1775, he was seized and brought 
to New Haven by a posse of Connecticut soldiers, who resented 
his partisan activity, was paraded ignominiously through our 
streets, and was kept here under guard for a month. After his 



44 NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 

release be took refuge within the British lines, and there 
received an appointment as Chaplain, from which he enjoyed to 
the end of his life a small half-pay pension. His later career, 
as the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, to which 
office he was chosen after the peace, while still in iSTew York 
City, is too well known to need rehearsal. 

Another graduate of high official standing who adhered to the 
British side was Judge Thomas Jones, of the iiSTew York 
Supreme Court, of the Class of 1750. He held court for the 
last time in April, 1776 ; and after repeated experiences of 
arrest and imprisonment for disaffection to the American cause, 
he embarked for England in 1781. In 1783 he estimated his 
losses at upwards of £14,000 sterling; and a small pension was 
assigned him, which he received until bis death in 1792. He 
is now perhaps most generally remembered as the author of a 
bitterly partisan History of Neiu York during the Revolution, 
which was published from his manuscript in 1879 ; in this work 
he refers to his Alma Mater as "then and still a nursery of sedi- 
tion, faction and republicanism." 

Another of the same group was Edmund Fanning, a native 
of Long Island, and a graduate of 1757. He settled as a lawyer 
in iN'orth Carolina, where he so won the favor of Governor Tryon 
as to become a trusted and influential factor in the public 
service. "When Tryon was promoted in 1771 to the llTew-York 
governorship. Fanning went with him, and there also held impor- 
tant office. In 1776, as an ardent Loyalist, he raised and took 
command of a regiment, remaining in the field through the war. 
Later, as a reward for his fidelity, he was made successively 
Lieutenant-Governor of iJ^ova Scotia and of Prince Edward 
Island. He accompanied Tryon on his expedition for the inva- 
sion of New Haven, in 1779, and when soliciting an honorary 
degree from Yale a quarter of a century later claimed that 
through his intervention the College buildings were saved from 
pillage and destruction. 

I have not as yet emphasized the admitted fact that a consid- 
erable minority of the business men of ISTew Haven in these 
pre-Revolutionary days are credited with Tory proclivities ; but 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 45 

it is fair to remember that, however exasperating the differences 
in opinion may have been, there was no open scandal ; and the 
vote in town-meeting in 1766, of 226 to 48 in favor of support- 
ing the Colony officials in ignoring the Stamp Act, probably 
expresses about the usual strength of the two parties. 

In any account of 'New Haven society, I should also mention 
that, after the trying experiences of the war were over, and the 
community had settled down again into its ordinary routine, the 
development of interests tended to consolidate, in their opposi- 
tion to the older and more conservative elements, the greater 
part of the Episcopalians with the more venturesome commer- 
cial adventurers and the restless, drifting fringe of the popula- 
tion, who, with little at stake, were indifferent to hardly-won 
standards. These miscellaneous elements, the nucleus of the 
future Jeffersonians and Tolerationists, absorbed into their camp 
the remnants of the loyalist faction, and so conspicuous a part 
did these form that the whole group was often described as 
"Tories," and classed as not altogether well-affected to the 
Federal government. Thus, President Stiles, when he com- 
ments in his Diary on the inauguration of the City government 
in 1Y84, refers with evident asperity to the numerous Tory 
element — estimating one-third of the duly enrolled citizens as 
"hearty Tories," one-third as "Whigs," and one-third as "indif- 
ferent." Of the forty voters who are Episcopalians, he labels 
all as "Tories" but two, and includes from the same camp from 
twenty to thirty of the First-Church flock. The credulous 
President's figures may have been warped by gossip and preju- 
dice; but at all events it is clear that thus early after the war 
a considerable weight in public affairs was conceded to the party 
which embraced the former Loyalists, in whom — so far as local 
traditions show — there was no pretence of reversion to dead 
issues, but a healthy and active interest in helping to work out 
the adaptation of the familiar conditions of life in our old 
democratic Colony to a new set of responsibilities and obliga- 
tions in the Union of independent States. 



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